Simplicity in your Arms
by Rahndom
Summary: Tim has always been different, Kon wants to make him better.


Little boys are supposed to be seen, but not heard, was the first lesson Timothy Drake learnt at the tender age of four. He remembers, of course, because it's a lesson not to be ignored.

He is back from school and his teacher wants to move him up another grade but the deadline for such paperwork is that very same day. His teacher explained the urgency to him, knowing the bright boy would understand.

Which is the reason why he storms into his parent's study, documents in his hands and a wide, proud smile on his face.

"Mother! Father!" he cries in delight. Only to stop in shock when, instead of the pleased-but-curious greetings he thought he would receive, he gets cold, merciless glares and a heavy hand on his shoulder.

"Quiet now, Timothy," his mother scolds softly. She never raises her voice, he knows, but the frigid intensity in her whispers is enough to still him in place. "Father is in the middle of a conference with the CEO of our European offices."

Jack nods to them before turning once more to the screen in front of him, his eyes glacial in a way Tim will have forever edged in his mind.

Once the conference is over, Jack looks down at him with a raised eyebrow. He hands the documents meekly, his cheeks flushing in embarrassment. His mother has had enough time to

quietly lecture him on the bad image he is showing to his father's associates. How ashamed his father and her are due to his unruly behavior.

Jack reads the document briefly before signing it and handing it back.

"See, son?" he says with a small, pleased smile that doesn't reach his eyes. "Wouldn't it have been better for you to quietly enter, hand me the documents and then wait for my response?"

"It is the adult thing to do," Janet nods in agreement. "Quiet, dignified, perfect."

Tim nods miserably and understand he is to be seen, but not heard.

His parents pat his head absently and discuss among eachother their next trip to Peru. There is a new dig Jack wants to check while Janet researches the new investment options the developing country has to offer for them.

Tim looks at them eagerly, he has yet to leave Gotham and the idea tickles him with childish excitement. Janet turns to him and hands him a list of pre-approved nannies for him to pick the one he considers most acceptable.

Their answer is clear before he even has to ask.

Once again, he will stay home with a stranger.

He is being punished.

"You are just too silent," Kon says one day, eyes wide as Robin types on his computer. "Even when the team relaxes together, you are like a fucking robot, Rob!"

Tim nods, eyes dull and lips relaxed in a lazy smile as he works.

There is nothing for him to say, therefore, he says nothing.

It is the adult thing to do.

Tim stared as Jenny, the new nanny (the third one), held her baby girl in her arms and cooed to her in delight. The baby cooed back, reaching with her tiny hands towards her mother who handed her a bottle for her to drink.

All the while, Jenny's eyes were nailed on her baby's, and the child responded in kind, a small whimper of satisfaction leaving her lips as she started feeding.

"Why do you do that?" he asked, confused. "Doesn't the baby feel uncomfortable that you are staring?"

Jenny laughed softly, her hand caressing her daughter's small head before she motioned for Tim to come closer with a swing of her head.

Tim did, perching on the couch and blinking his wide blue eyes.

"It's part of the bonding between mother and child," she explained patiently. "When the baby eats, you need to let her know you are there to protect her. That way the baby knows you will always be there for her and she can start feeling safe."

"Really?" Tim asked, tilting his head.

"Yup!" Jenny replied. "Some say the first color a child remembers is the color of his or her mother's eyes. Even I can remember the exact shade of green my mother's eyes were, it's always brought me peace."

Tim nods in understanding, but the small frown of his eyebrows doesn't leave his face for the next following days.

"What are you doing?" Tim asks as he finds Kon staring at the mirror. The clone frowns, staring at his reflection.

"Just thinking," he replies, crossing his arms over his chest.

"He wants to know if his eyes are the same blue as Superman's or whether they are blue like Luthor's," Bart explains simply. "I told him it was stupid, because both have the same eyes."

"They don't!" Kon protests. "Clark's eyes are blue like the sky! Light and cheerful! Luthor's are darker… almost… I don't know!"

Cassie, who is currently holding the mirror in front of Kon, laughs.

"If it helps I think your eyes are like Superman's," she says. "I have my father's eyes as well, you know?"

"I have my mother's!" Bart chirps happily. "She used to say it's a family trait?"

Kon huffs.

"What about you, Tim?" Cassie asks with a smile. "What about your eyes?"

Tim blinks, caught off-guard.

He thinks about his mother's blue eyes as she placed a proud hand over his shoulder, she was so distant then, a giant before him, and then compares them to his father's guilt laden ones, and the way they seemed to glisten with heart-break whenever they locked stares. They seem the same shade to him.

Always have.

Still, there had to be something in his face for his father to look so melancholic when he stared at him.

He shrugs.

"My mother's, I guess," he answers finally. "My mother and my father had the same kind of blue eyes, so it's hard to tell."

He ignores Bart's and Cassie's confused looks in favor of Kon's relieved smile. He is not the only one not to know where he inherited his eye color.

Mission accomplished.

The first time Sarah (the fourteenth nanny) wrapped her arms around him, Tim tensed immediately and he blinked in confusion despite the pain. His knee was bleeding and his eyes were pooling with tears, but it was nothing he hadn't faced before, which didn't explain why she felt the need to embrace him and to whisper sweet reassurances in his ear.

Of course he was going to be okay, he just skinned his knee as he fell, it wasn't the end of the world.

"What are you doing?" he asked softly, afraid to startle her.

"You are hurt," she said simply. "It looked like you needed a hug."

"Oh," Tim replied, unsure. "I can stand now."

Sarah let him go with a small smile, praising him for being such a 'brave boy'. He shook his head.

"I'm not brave," he corrected. "Mother always says a man has to be strong enough to stand on his own after he falls. It is a sign of true character."

Something broke in Sarah's eyes that day, Tim was sure, because, from then on, Sarah started to avoid his mother whenever she was home and the discussions with his father behind locked doors became longer and longer.

It was only three months later that Sarah was let go of and she wrapped her arms around his small shoulders tightly before kissing his forehead and handing him a slip of paper with her cellphone number on it.

"It's okay to cry and ask for help when you are hurt," she whispered gently. "It is a sign you are human, Timmy."

His mother threw the note away as soon as Sarah was gone, huffing. Tim would think about the young woman with the bright smile and comforting eyes whenever he was hurt from then on.

Bart and Kon are hovering over him like worried mother hens when Batman finally comes to pick him up. Tim wonders what's wrong with them for a while before shaking his head.

He just broke his leg.

It's normal in their line of work.

Cassie enters his room nervously, her eyes fixed on his own as she lets Batman in. Kon offers him a hand to help him stand but Tim just jumps to his feet (his foot, really, the one foot that can still hold his whole weight) and finds balance with the clutches Bart pushes in his direction.

The pain is almost unbearable and his eyes sting with tears he will not shed. Batman's frown deepens under his cowl as Tim's lips start turning blue from shock, but, despite everything, the teen manages to pull a proud smile on his face.

"Shall we go?"

Jane, nanny number eight, liked to read to him before sleep. She sat by his bedside and read him all the fairytale books he had in his room, smiling all the time when Tim's eyes drooped in sleep.

When the books ran out and Tim couldn't pick a favorite one for a second read (favoritism, his father said, is a sign of selfish fancy and therefore a waste of one's time). She decided she might as well read to him the rest of the books in his room. It hadn't been until she picked Hittler's Ovens and tried to stammer an explanation as to why she couldn't read such a book to him he decided it was time enough to tell her he had read the book already, as he had read all the books lining the bookshelves (wasn't that the reason why they were there?).

Jane's eyes had lit up with awe before she jumped from her seat and picked one of his parent's books from the hallway and asked him to read some of it for her.

He did, of course, not understanding why she squealed (a bad example of adult indulgence, his mother would scoff) before grabbing the phone and calling his parents to tell them that their four year old was a genius that was already reading university level books.

There was something his parents replied to her that made her frown and try to argue that a four-year-old certainly should be reading such books and then he heard his mother's voice scolding Jane.

Three days later, Tim woke up to find a new girl in his kitchen. Kathy, she called herself, and she explained that due to unfortunate circumstances Jane had to go away, but that she left her address for him to write sometimes.

Tim didn't have the heart to explain to Kathy or to his Jane, afterwards, that while he could read, his hands weren't steady enough for him to write very well, and therefore he had been forbidden by his parents to attempt it until his penmanship was perfectly even.

Up until his late teens he would never understand what the fuss was about with Jane, but he still hears her voice sometimes, when he wants to sleep and can't. Her eager voice lulls him to sleep.

Kon knows there is something definitely wrong with Tim. Well, Tim's a Bat and you need to be as messed up as possible to be a Bat. But still, something tells Kon that Tim's kind of 'messed up' is not the same as the other Bats.

All the Bats are observant and analytical in their own way, yes, but Tim is… More, somehow, just more of everything his so-called siblings are. He is fiercer than that Jason dude when he is angry, more patient than Dick when around someone he actually likes, more stubborn than Damian when he knows he is right, more vicious than The Bat himself when someone he loves has been hurt.

It almost feels like Tim can't hold inside of himself all those emotions for long and he will search a perfectly logical and acceptable outlet that will fly off the radar to most of the world.

Whether it's mentally teasing Ra's Al Ghul until the old man is about to intellectually jizz in his pants to jumping through the roofs in Gotham while competing with Damian (Kon knows it's the way they bond, he just KNOWS it!) or simply staring into Kon's eyes and muttering different shades of blue under his breath as if trying to find the nearest approximate.

Then there is that frightening ease to slip into roles. Tim is a unique young man, a remarkable character, and yet, he can easily accept a complete change of his own self and melt into a completely different person.

Gender, age, ethnicity, nothing seems to matter to Tim, he sheds his character, his very essence like a snake and it somehow frightens Kon. It makes him feel the Tim he has known most of his life can be one of his many masks, and that the real thing is something completely different, some alien person that hides even from him, even in the intimacy of their bedroom, under the sheets Kon thinks are too plain but Tim (apparently) adores.

He's seen Tim do it more than once, whenever Cassie and/or Rose or even Bart will comment something is off with him, his posture, the way he mouths his words as precisely as he does everything else, Tim will tense for a millisecond, something almost all of them miss, before his shoulders relax and his mouth starts to form a slight slur, nothing out of the ordinary, it looks normal and teenage-y and human, but it's not Tim.

It frightens Kon to think that Tim will change his very body language just to please, to fit in, to be accepted.

Tim was seven when he told his teacher, Ms. Hays, that he was quite sure his parents loved him, just not the whole of him. She had frowned at him, grabbing her notepad from her drawer.

He frowned at her and tried to think of a way to explain how his father adored it when he was silent and smart and nodded to all his lectures over antiques he had unearthed himself. Plus he liked him when he was young and impressionable and eager to play ball with him in the backyard, but he absolutely hated it when Tim frowned and told his father this or that senator was obviously mistaken and/or lying, or when he tilted his head in confusion over the use of some or other social gathering.

His mother, on the other hand, liked to debate politics with him and encouraged his different opinions and outlooks. She also liked to hold his hand when they went out and have him scowl at everyone and everything that dared to approach them, it was a personal game of hers.

So, he was the obedient and eager heir to his father, and the spoiled and opinionated young man to his mother.

Ms. Hays' horrified eyes told him he had said something wrong, and that, sometimes adults liked to avoid the facts of the world as if they were poisonous animals. Sometimes the most simple thing in the world would horrify an adult into hysterics, which was the reason why he forced his face into a mischievous pout and his eyes instantly turned to his shoes.

"If they loved me whole," he muttered in fake sullenness. "They would stay here instead of going to work so much."

He felt gratified and powerful when Ms. Hays' shoulders relaxed and her hand found its way to his hair. She continued to sooth his bruised ego for a few minutes, whispering how parents had to leave their children sometimes and it didn't mean that they didn't love them any less.

Tim just nodded, pretending to be offended by something other than her sugary description of a well fabricated lie.

Tim is in bed with Kon, his favorite place in the world, Kon's hands are gently exploring his skin while his tongue is marking each and every one of his scars. He will have a long way over it, Tim thinks. But lets him.

It is Kon's way of showing he cares.

"Tell me what you want from me," Tim whispers, his eyes wide and blue and Kon can't think he has ever seen something so pretty in his life. Still his mind goes back to the three hour long chat he had with Dick over a beer and some soda (he is still a minor, Dick says, and doesn't want Superman to kill him), of how Tim lived while his parents were alive, how Mr. Drake was with him before his wife died.

Kon still can't believe someone can't see what a wonderful, precious son Tim is. How can someone try to change him. To pretend he is not there?

To leave him behind?

True, it was what ultimately saved Tim's life and put him in the path that now made him Kon's… but still.

He feels he can ask anything of Tim, silly Tim, smart Tim, slutty Tim, fucking Caroline Hill…

… And Tim will deliver.

"Kon?" Tim asks, his eyes slowly losing color as he prepares to perform. How come Kon never noticed before?

No matter.

"I want… I want you to be Tim," he whispers finally. "Just Tim."

"Simply, Tim," Tim repeats, eyes uncertain.

Kon nods.

"I love Tim, so I want Tim."

Something inside of Tim seems to shift, so uncoil and twist. Tension Kon had not noticed before relaxes, happiness gives color to Tim's grey eyes once more into their usual soft blue.

He smiles with utmost sincerity.

"Okay."

Kon smiles back.

He will heal Tim, he knows. It might take time and patience he is not known for, but, one day, Caroline and prodigal son and quiet genius and even self-sufficient hero are going to go away and there will only be Tim.

What else can he ask for?


End file.
